The skatepark off Dolores was half-empty by late afternoon.

  After work, Daniel found Henry sitting on the coping at the far end of the bowl, paper bag in his lap, tossing crumbs to a cluster of pigeons.

  "You're early," Daniel said, sitting down next to him. "Going to head to Li Qinghua's later?"

  "Yeah. I had some time to kill so I'm here. Mom kicked me out. Said I was moping around the kitchen." Henry threw another crumb. The pigeons fought over it. "I wasn't moping. I was thinking. There's a difference."

  "About what?"

  "College stuff."

  Daniel glanced at him. Henry had mentioned applying to SF State, but that had been months ago before all of this stuff about qi had even started.

  "You hear back?"

  "Not yet. Probably won't for another few months." Henry pulled his legs up, crossed them on the coping. "Applications get accepted in March."

  "What happens if you get in?"

  "Then I tell her I applied," Henry replied, leaning backwards. "That I don't want to go to a community college or that working in the restaurant all the time isn't for me."

  "People have their own lives," replied Daniel, thinking about it. "She'll get over it."

  "You don't know my mom."

  A kid with green hair dropped into the bowl, tried something complicated, bailed. His friends laughed. He got up and tried again.

  "She's a total perfectionist. Wants me to do community college because it's the same thing but cheaper," Henry said. "Be practical, be smart. Save money. Stay home. Help with the restaurant." He picked at a loose thread on his jeans. "It feels like my whole life is being planned for me, without me. And I guess that makes sense, besides I'm not sure what I'd study anyway."

  "But?"

  "But I don't want to be practical. I want to do something else. Be somewhere else. See if I can make it on my own. Kinda like you."

  Daniel laughed.

  "You do not want to be me."

  "I mean maybe not all of you..." Henry trailed off, watching the green-haired kid bail again. "You are kind of dumb sometimes, dumber than me."

  "Hey!" replied Daniel. He made a fist and gently punched Henry on the side.

  "Haha, okay, okay! Jesus, you're violent today," laughed Henry. "But yeah, you know you can do whatever you want, anytime you want. And you got superpowers, even if you're poor. You got like real freedom you know."

  "I didn't always have it. Life sucked for me too. For a long time."

  "Yeah," replied Henry, remembering. "Guess nobody's got it easy."

  The pigeons had multiplied. A particularly bold one hopped up onto the coping between them, watching Henry like it expected more.

  "Well, at least this one's got no fear," Henry said.

  "It's a pigeon."

  "It's a pigeon with ambition. Respect, yo." He tossed it a crumb. It caught the crumb mid-air and fluttered off before the others could steal it. "See? Smart too."

  They sat in silence for a minute. The sun was lower now, the light going gold at the edges.

  "Can I say something?" Henry asked.

  "Yeah."

  "It's gonna sound stupid."

  "Most things you say sound stupid."

  "Asshole." But Henry was smiling. "Okay. So. You know how we've been training with Li Qinghua?"

  "Yeah."

  "And you've been getting better and even becoming like a local crime fighting celebrity."

  Daniel waited. He could feel something coming.

  "I'm happy for you," Henry said. "I mean that. It's incredible, amazing, who wouldn't be if their best friend is basically like a comic book hero."

  "But?"

  Henry was quiet for a second. The green-haired kid landed something, not the trick he'd been trying, something simpler. His friends cheered anyway.

  "I'm falling behind," Henry said. "And I know that's not the point. I know I'm there to document stuff and help out and whatever. But sometimes I'm running laps in the courtyard while you're learning actual real stuff, and I just..." He shrugged. "I feel useless. Like I'm the sidekick in someone else's story."

  Daniel didn't know what to say. He'd noticed Henry struggling during training. Noticed the frustration when Li Qinghua focused on Daniel and left Henry to run drills alone. But he hadn't thought about how it felt from Henry's side.

  "You're not useless," Daniel said.

  "I know. Logically. I know." Henry threw another crumb to the pigeons. "But it still bothers me. You're getting so far ahead that I feel like by the time I get started, you'll already be at the finish line."

  "That doesn't matter," said Daniel. "Even if I become like a supreme, awesome martial master. It's not like I'm going to ascend this mortal plane and leave you behind you know."

  "Hey, you never know," replied Henry. "Weren't there some stories about mortals becoming gods in Greek fairytales?"

  "I mean if you're talking about Hercules or Jesus, I might have to actually die first before becoming a god," laughed Daniel. "But yeah, don't sweat it. Even if any of that happens. I'll figure out a way to take you with me. We're in this together, for the long haul."

  Henry looked at him. Gratitude, maybe, or relief at being heard.

  "Thanks," he said.

  "Yeah."

  The bold pigeon came back. It hopped along the coping toward Henry, tilting its head.

  "Looks like it's back again," said Daniel.

  "This one's definitely someone's reincarnated grandma," Henry said. "Look at it judging me."

  "It probably just thinks you've been a very extra nice food dispenser," replied Daniel, leaning back and lying on the ground. Sometimes, it felt nice to look up at the sky. The orange haze drifted along the red and white clouds. "Besides, do you think pigeons have souls?"

  "Buddhist sense? Maybe." Henry held out a crumb. The pigeon took it delicately. "My grandma is like this. Always telling me I'm getting too skinny again."

  "So, now you pass on to a pigeon? I get fed too much, so everyone else must get fed too?"

  "Yeah, you know that's totally it," replied Henry. "Don't you know little guy. You think this is charity, but it's really me punishing you."

  The kids skating in the back hopped off one of the railings, metal on metal. That sounded like someone got a pretty rad grind.

  "Speaking of things," Henry said. "My mom watched Executioners of Song Mountain last night with me. I was on a binge on the whole series, trying to get some training ideas."

  "Yeah?"

  "And she said the Tiger Claw doesn't match the one that the guy does in Chronicles of the Dragon Inn. I've been thinking about it. You know the moves we've been talking about, appear in more than one movie, like the Vajra Subduing Palm is in both Return to Shaolin and The Legend of the Righteous Dragon. Ghost Step is used by Master Wei in Executioners of Song Mountain, but it appears briefly in The White Phoenix Bride as the move the Lord of the Mountain uses to get out of trouble."

  "Yeah."

  "They all look the same," Henry turned the pebble over in his fingers. "But if you look at it closely. The Ghost Step the Lord of the Mountain uses is more about creating illusions, while Master Wei's version is about passing by in a blur that confuses people around him. Both confuse, but not in the same way."

  "Isn't that just because the directors were different? So, the moves just naturally got changed to whatever they thought it should look like."

  "That's what I thought too, but having seen you do Tiger Claw a few times. I feel like they are both the same thing."

  Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

  Daniel sat up.

  "The same thing how? They look completely different. In the Drunken Warrior, he was literally like cleaving through solid stone. I can barely manage concrete, and only at the surface."

  "I don't know exactly. Maybe. Or like..."

  Henry struggled for the words. "You know how we learned about Genghis Khan in school?"

  "What?"

  "Just go with me here. We learned about him. Great conqueror, built an empire, killed a ton of people. But nobody alive ever met him. Everything we know is from people who wrote it down after he was dead."

  "Okay, but also some of it was from people who were there."

  "Sure, but even they had their own angle. Chinese historians hated him. Mongol historians thought he was the greatest thing ever. Same guy. Completely different depending on who's telling it." Henry tossed the pebble again. "So which version is real?"

  Daniel thought about it. "Neither. Or both."

  "Right. The details are all different. But we still know who he was. Not what he ate for breakfast or what his voice sounded like. But like how he was to most people."

  "So, no matter what people would still know it's him, even if they didn't mention his name."

  "Yeah." Henry caught the pebble, held it. "Some of the details might get mixed up, but the general idea would make it so you'd know its Genghis Khan, anytime someone said the largest empire in history."

  "Land empire."

  "Okay, the British don't count," said Henry, rolling his eyes.

  Daniel laughed.

  "So, you think the movie techniques are like that."

  "Yeah, they are sort of like shadows," Henry said. "People casting shadows and others seeing what they look like. Some closer, some further. Others larger, others smaller, until all we have left are…."

  "Shells of what martial arts should be," said Daniel. "That's what we had thought about before. Why all the martial arts today lost their qi. It wasn't that the stories weren't true, but what is true, changes on who is telling the story."

  It felt like ages then, when he and Henry were just figuring out qi was real. From the internet forums to the warehouse to the Asian Art Museum, and back till it worked.

  Had he been staring at shadows so long that they had become real? Or were there already principles he was applying beyond what he was looking at with emotions and meridians.

  "Li Qinghua talked about the Three Treasures," Daniel said. "Jing, Qi, Shen."

  Henry sat up.

  "Mind, Body, and Spirit. That's about people, right?"

  "Yeah. What a person needs to use techniques, but she didn't exactly explain all of it. Only the Jing and Qi part, but not what Spirit was. Or what Shen is. Maybe, I wouldn't have gotten it the first time, even if she did, but I think I might get it now."

  Daniel picked up a pebble tossed it up before catching it in his hand. "What if it's not just people?"

  Henry looked at him. "What do you mean?"

  "The techniques. What if they are the same thing?" Daniel sat forward. "Think about it. Tiger Claw has a form. My hand, my fist, and my body. That's the Jing of the Tiger Claw. It has power. That's Qi. The force behind the strike. But what about the spirit? The soul? That's the meaning behind the name, the Tiger behind the fist. It is an ordinary move, but when I become the tiger, that's when the move becomes real."

  Daniel hesitated then, remembering some painful memories.

  "When I feel like I want to disappear. That's when Ghost Step becomes real to me. That's the spirit part. Shen."

  Henry looked at Daniel and was quiet.

  Daniel continued.

  "Mind, body, and spirit. It describes people and magical techniques. And only when you have all three, can you use the move. That's why it takes years to master certain moves, why schools take only a few students, why martial artists were so rare in the past."

  Daniel held the pebble in his hand. Everything was finally making sense. The world's mysteries turning itself around in his hand.

  "It could take months to get it right. And it's also probably deeply personal to those who get it as well. You don't exactly share personal things with random people."

  Daniel tossed the pebble again, catching it in his hand.

  "So, it's not that the masters didn't want to share, but you can't share that kind of thing with anyone else. Which meant many of them would just choose to die out, if they couldn't find the right person."

  "Rough," said Henry. "Looks like nobody had it easy back then either."

  The green-haired kid and his friends were leaving now, their voices fading toward the street. There was no one in the park except them now.

  "So, Tiger Claw's nature is hunger," Henry said slowly. "Taking what it wants."

  "And Ghost Step is disappearing. Not wanting to be seen."

  Henry leaned back to look at the sky too. "What about Vajra Subduing Palm? Tui Shou?"

  To understand someone as deeply as yourself. To be indestructible and unstoppable without restraint.

  That was the key. Emotions weren't just unlocking meridians. They were the soul and spirit of the techniques themselves made manifest through his memories.

  Daniel jumped up and looked at Henry.

  "I got it."

  "Tui Shou," Daniel repeated. Push Hands. He thought about what JadeBeauty had written on the forum. Understanding the other person as deeply as if they were yourself. "Is about understanding people. Listening energy isn't just metaphysical. It's literal. You read them so deeply as if you were them."

  "Like a psychic?"

  "No, like..." Daniel thought about Li Mei. How she moved, how she fought. The way she held herself like she expected an attack from any direction. The sharpness underneath everything, even when she was eating noodles.

  Then he thought about Henry. The way he joked when he was nervous. The way he tossed food to pigeons like he was trying to take care of something. The way he hid his college application because he didn't want to disappoint anyone.

  Daniel stood up.

  "Do the movements with me."

  "What?"

  "The Push Hands stuff. The one we did way back at the beginning." Daniel held out his arms. "Come on."

  Henry got up, brushing off his jeans. "We sucked at this last time."

  "I know. Just try."

  They faced each other. Forearms touching, light contact. Daniel remembered the basic pattern, and then all the separate drills he did before, combining all the movements together. Wing Chun. Aikido. Kali. Everything was related.

  He thought about Henry. The guy who wanted to prove himself but didn't want to hurt anyone doing it. The guy who showed up every time, even when he felt useless. His best friend. What was he thinking now? What thoughts would Daniel have if he was him?

  "Don't leave me behind."

  Henry pushed. Daniel felt it coming before it arrived. Henry was going to push left because that's how Henry moved, always a little to the left first, always leading with his stronger side first. Because he was afraid to be weak.

  Daniel yielded and Henry stumbled past him.

  "What the hell?"

  "Again."

  Henry reset. Daniel felt it again. Henry didn't like to fail twice. He'd try something safer the second time around. Daniel was already moving before Henry committed. The push slid past him, as if he were as slick as oil. Henry then tried again, and again. Doing more extravagant moves with each iteration.

  A slap, a punch, a half-hearted kick. He even did a five-move sumo-style slap from Street Fighter and Daniel just moved back his shoulder. It hit him lightly and flew straight past as if touching air. The perfect defense. Holy shit. Daniel thought to himself. He got it. Mastered it in one go.

  "Holy hell," Henry stepped back, staring at him. "You just read my mind."

  "Not your mind. I'm just being... you."

  "Alright," said Henry, grinning. "What am I thinking now?"

  Daniel smiled.

  "You're thinking that this is stupid and that I'm getting super lucky. Now, you're hungry and want to see if I can figure out what kind of dumpling you want."

  Henry stood surprised.

  "Damn, you sure qi didn't give you like psychic powers or something?"

  "Haha, it probably only works when I get what the other person is doing. For most people, it's probably only on the surface level of knowing. Hey, I want to beat you up."

  "So, this being an exercise with two people probably was a way so the user could experience all sorts of different people and figure them out," mumbled Henry. "Like doing an interview, and asking questions back and forth so you knew what they were thinking?"

  "Yeah," said Daniel, thinking. "I guess that would make sense."

  Though underneath, he thought that perhaps that's what all martial arts were on some level too. Fight someone enough times, and you figure them out, one way or another.

  "Alright," Daniel said. "One more thing."

  He stepped back. Took a breath. Raised both hands overhead, palms facing down.

  Vajra Subduing Palm.

  If Vajra was unbreakable, unstoppable. And subduing comes from the Buddhist idea of defeating demons.

  My demons. My heart. My problems.

  The Heart Sutra.

  What was Daniel most afraid of? What was his worst and deepest fear.

  I'm not good enough? That I'm just a scared kid that doesn't know what's going on in the world?

  I…

  The expression Norbu made right before he died then came to his mind. It didn't bother him then, but somehow…it felt like regret. Regret, that he couldn't do more, when he had the chance.

  I also don't want to be useless.

  I can also help. Don't worry about me.

  I can take it. I can behave. Don't abandon me.

  I…I'm not weak.

  Daniel opened his eyes and struck down as if striking down a childhood memory. His hands came down with a snap but then stopped right before he hit the ground. It was close. He could feel that if he continued it might actually crack the concrete. But something in the back of his mind told him.

  This wasn't it. You're still missing something.

  A gust of wind left in his wake, startling Henry who was nearby.

  "Damn, can you at least give me a warning before you do that. God, I thought at first you might hit me with that and started to freak out."

  "Haha, sorry," replied Daniel. "So close but no cigar."

  Perhaps Li Qinghua would have a solution here. She's been pretty good at reading him, too. Maybe she'd know what his deepest fear was. He hadn't had time to thank her for being kind to him, when she didn't have to be. All those times, she poured tea and did those little things. He looked up at the setting sun and turned towards the shop's direction on Jackson.

  "It's almost training time, you want to head there together?"

  "Yeah but let me grab the pork buns before I go this time. I didn't forget that you both had a heart to heart while I was off last time to get food. Well, it's about time I had a heart to heart too. Getting rid of me all the time you're talking about something cool. Tsk."

  "Hey, sorry," laughed Daniel. "Alright, I'll see you in thirty minutes. I'll head there now. I want to see what she thinks." Daniel was already walking toward the edge of the park. "Maybe this new framework will let me master everything I can read now."

  Daniel made his best impression of those famous philosophers, putting his hand up to his chin.

  "You could say, I might even be a genius."

  "Don't let it get to your head, you're still pretty dumb sometimes," replied Henry. "Just wait till I get superpowers, and you'll see what a real genius looks like."

  Daniel shook his head and watched as Henry disappeared around the corner, his board tucked under his arm, probably already thinking about which shop had the best pork buns. Knowing Henry, he'd spend ten minutes comparing prices before buying from the same place he always did.

  The park was almost empty now. A few pigeons still pecked at the ground where Henry had been feeding them, but even they were starting to drift away.

  Daniel picked up his board and started walking.

  The route to Jackson Street was familiar. He'd walked it dozens of times now, ever since Li Qinghua had started training him. Down through the edge of the Mission, cutting through the alleys he knew by heart, then into Chinatown proper where the streets narrowed and the signs changed from English to Chinese.

  Daniel's mind was still buzzing. Techniques had a soul. And once you give them a soul, they become real. Was that how Ladder Cloud Step could work too? What about the other legendary moves like the Diamond Body? Iron Palm? Poison Hands? It was beginning to feel kinda crazy, but he felt he could really master anything now.

  Would Li Qinghua be surprised when he started doing Tui Shou when he got there? Then again, she always seemed to understand things he couldn't put into words. She'd probably known all along and was just waiting for him to figure it out himself.

  That was her way. Never giving answers directly. Always making him work for it.

  Li Qinghua's shop was three blocks down. He could already picture the brass bell chiming as he pushed through the door, the smell of dried herbs and old wood, the way she'd look up from whatever she was doing and invite him in for tea.

  But blue lights could be seen from the distance. He almost couldn't think about it. What? By the time he got there, there was yellow tape. The door of the store had been ripped straight off its hinges. The sign at the window had been smashed in. Harmony broken in two pieces.

  A cop stepped into his path. Young guy, uniform too clean, like he'd just started his shift.

  "Sir, you need to stay back. This is an active crime scene."

  "I know her." The words came out strange. "The woman who lives here."

  "Then I'm sorry."

  "What do you…"

  Then Daniel saw it. The ambulance bringing up a black body bag they used when someone had died.

  Li Qinghua. She was dead.